AS starts up a discussion of Laud Humphreys' ground-breaking - and ethically controversial 1970 study - "The Tearoom Trade."
Why do people have "crazy sex"?
Forget about Senator Craig. What about that scene from the hugely popular movie Risky Business, in which the main characters have a long, slow-motion slog in a New York subway car, as it rocks on the tracks, as best memory serves? I think there is a commercial that suggests "elevator sex".
My point (at least the way I'm seeing it now) would be that the way to relate to it publicly, to the extent that it is required in terms of a public ethics, is through hypocrisy or some other double-standard type construct. Otherwise, what's going on between consenting adults is their own business, either private or semi-private. Lord knows, only a few are given to "policing" whether someone is in the missionary position or in a sling ...
IS THAT SO WRONG?
It doesn't seem that you can condemn people for "gay sex" (or wanting 'gay relationships') and then go on to accord yourself - for whatever reason - "crazy sex". To do so, wouldn't you have to sort of admit that "gay sex" wasn't, somehow, "crazy sex"?
What's more, it's a bit too facile to excuse/dismiss "crazy sex", which may well largely be a choice, on the same basis on which you repudiate/dismiss "gay sex", which may well largely not be a choice, for some.
Nor it is perfectly sensible to have people who are visibly or publicly condemnatory of "gay identified" sex, but who themselves have "gay sex" (a.k.a., MSM). What does that mean, afterall? We accord a place for "straight" men to have 'boys on the side', while publicly condemning boys who like boys? C'mon.
People have "crazy sex" for all kinds of reasons:
-it's a fantasy; or an adventure (a conquest)
-it's a taboo, and therefore alluring, especially to those who invest a lot psychic energy in constructing that taboo
-it's easy, because it can be controlled by "release" in discreet intervals; because it involves no lasting commitment (to self), it doesn't force any question of integrity; and, at the far end, it may yield a transient, yet powerful feeling of liberation because it is unattached, ephemeral - the sheer essence of ego-power, to act for joy without consequence or care "for once" ... at least until the elixir is needed again ...
-it's mutates into a compulsion, rather than a choice
-it's ... fundamentally and paradoxically human, somehow, to doff our "better self" in order to preserve it (a sort of bacchanalia theory); or, it's la nostalgie pour la boue, as the French say.
Notice that this list, by no means comprehensive, doesn't appeal to "self loathing". That's just a catch-all, often chosen for emphasis, it seems, because it points to a most damaging type of "split".
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Let's go outside ...
